Bulletproof feathers
Subtitle: how science uses nature's secrets to design cutting-edge technology
By: edited by Robert Allen
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
ISBN-13: 9780226014708
Description: "Though they may sound like the stuff of science fiction, in fact such inventions represent only the most recent iterations of natural mechanisms that are billions of years old - the focus of the rapidly growing field of biomimetics. Based on the realization that natural selection has for countless eons been conducting trial-and-error experiments with the laws of physics, chemistry, material science, and engineering, biomimetics takes nature as its laboratory, looking to the most successful developments and strategies of an array of plants and animals as a source of technological innovation and ideas. Thus the lotus flower, with its waxy, water-resistant surface, gives us stainproofing; the feathers of raptors become transformable airplane wings; and the nerve-deadening serrations on a mosquito's proboscis are adapted to hypodermics."--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-189) and index.
Table of contents: title: Aerodynamics of biological flight / Jeremy Rayner; title: Marine dynamics / Jeannette Yen; title: Humanlike robots / Yoseph Bar-Cohen; title: Underwater bioacoustics / Tomonari Akamatsu; title: Air acoustics / James Simmons; title: Cooperative behavior / Robert Allen; title: Ventilation / Steve Vogel; title: New materials & natural design / Julian Vincent.